Regular Food in Jars contributor Alexandra Jones is dropping in today with a recipe for homemade fire cider. This invigorating tonic is said to help boost your immune system and keep you healthy throughout the winter cold and flu season! -Marisa

Where I am in Philadelphia, the leaves are changing, the air is getting cooler after a warm start to fall, and root crops are ready to harvest.

That means it’s time to start a batch of homemade fire cider.

This spicy, bracing infusion has been used for centuries as a way to preserve herbs and vegetables that also have medicinal value. Whipping up a big batch at the end of the growing season means that you’ve got a tasty tonic to sip on or use in recipes like sauces, marinades, and salad dressings.

I first tried making this recipe years ago, when I was a CSA manager tasked with finding with a handful of new and interesting recipes to include with each share of vegetables. One week, we included horseradish in the boxes, and I came upon the now familiar recipe.

I loved the ritual, the acidic flavor, and the kick — a powerful whoosh of horseradish, garlic, and onion straight to the nose. I’m not sure whether it was thanks to the homemade fire cider or something else, but I didn’t get sick that winter.

This Honey Maple Cranberry Sauce is sweet, tart, and perfect for serving with turkey on Thanksgiving!

Let’s take a moment to talk about cranberry condiments. They are a Thanksgiving staple and are one of the easiest things to make rather than buy.

I’ve made a number of different versions to serve with turkey over the years. There was my “canned” cranberry sauce in which I molded a homemade version in a tin can in order to achieve the classic ridges. Before that, I shared a simple cranberry jelly made with just a pound of berries for easy DIY-ing.

Despite the fact that I’ve got so many variations at my disposal, I couldn’t resist making this Honey Maple Cranberry Sauce. Initially, I was going to mold this naturally sweetened version in tin can like I did all those years back. But honestly, it felt like too much trouble and do we really need another gimmick these days?

I find that cranberry skins are often tough, so I typically work my finished cranberry sauce through a food mill when it’s finished cooking. That results in a sauce that it more uniform in texture and is an easier sell to the people who have only just graduated from the overly sweet canned cranberry jelly. It’s an entirely optional step, though.

The finished cranberry sauce is flavored lightly with lemon zest and a cinnamon stick and is sweetened with both honey and maple syrup. It’s appealingly tart and sweet, and I am looking forward to heaping a generous scoop onto my plate come Thursday.

Do you have a house cranberry sauce or relish? Share your tradition in the comments!

This Spicy Peach Barbecue Sauce is the perfect way to put up imperfect, end-of-season peaches (or use some of the ones you stashed in the freezer at the height of the season).

Friends, it’s a bittersweet moment. It’s time to share the final recipe I made as part of my summer partnership with Ball Canning. Our goal was to spread the word about the many pleasures of home canning and I do think we managed to do it deliciously.

Today’s recipe is for Spicy Peach Barbecue Sauce and you’ll find the recipe over on Freshly Preserving Ideas, Ball Canning’s snazzy Tumblr. Now, I realize that peach season is over in many parts of the world and is rapidly hurtling to a close in other regions.

If you can still get peaches, you should make this sauce. If fresh peaches are but a memory, it will also work nicely with frozen peaches. Just make sure to start the cooking process with the frozen fruit, rather than letting them defrost first.

In March, I did it again. That time, they sent me an NS1 Stock Pot and I make a pot of roasted tomato and basil soup to brighten up a cold winter day.

I always enjoy these cookware challenges because they give me opportunities to play with a really fabulous pans and push myself outside my regular culinary patterns. So, when they got in touch again back in April and asked if I might want to do it again, this time with their d5 Stainless Steel All-In-One Pan, I said yes.

This line of All-Clad is made from five bonded layers of stainless steel and aluminum to best conduct heat and cook evenly. It’s induction-capable, has two loop side handles, sloped sides for efficient reduction, and a shining stainless interior that makes it easy to clean. It comes with a tight-fitting lid and is made in the US.

The particular challenge with this piece of cookware was to design a recipe that only used five ingredients, to mimic the five layers of metal that makes up the pan. I decided on building a five ingredient barbecue sauce, using a jar of apple butter as the base.

It’s a tasty, tangy, spicy sauce that is perfect for summer cookouts and slow cooker pulled pork. You could always fancy it up with additional ingredients, but I enjoy the simple approach.

This is the perfect pan for quick sauces, because the low, wide base allows for quick evaporation and the marriage of flavor. You combine a pint of apple butter with apple cider vinegar, finely chopped onion, honey, and a couple heaping spoonfuls of gochugang in the pan and cook until it is thick and the onion is tender (also, add some salt and pepper to taste).

I like to scrape the finished sauce into a large measuring cup and zap it with an immersion blender to smooth it out, but that’s totally optional.

As you can see, I also used the pan to roast off some chicken legs that I then painted with my tangy sauce. I’d also use this sauce on top of turkey meatloaf, on grilled burgers, and will happily combine it with some chicken thighs in the slow cooker for pulled chicken sandwiches.

Each summer, I develop two mental lists of preserves (though come to think of it, it might serve me well to actually commit these lists to paper). On one side, I line up the things I must can. These are the products like roasted corn salsa, dilly beans, and tomato products. As much as I love jam (and inevitably make a goodly amount), it’s never on that must can list. However, pizza sauce always is.

Throughout the fall and winter, we make a lot of pizza and I love having some homemade sauce on the shelf to use. Sometimes our pizzas are built on a traditional crust and other times, it’s Carrie Vitt’s sunflower seed version (delicious and so good for those times when you’ve been eating too many bready things).

Over the years, I’ve made pizza sauce a number of different ways. I’ve got a small batch technique in Preserving by the Pint that I like a lot. You’ll find a honey sweetened version in Naturally Sweet Food in Jars. Truly, as long as you follow safe canning guidelines, there is no wrong way.

For this batch, I used ten pounds of grape and cherry tomatoes, roasted them down, pushed them through a food mill, and finished cooking them down on the stove. The finished sauce is a muted orange color, just thick enough to be spreadable, and tastes deeply of summer.

I like this particular approach because the tomatoes do their initial cooking off the stove top. I can prep them while making dinner and then finish them off with that before-bed energy boost I so often have.

This would work just as well with more traditional canning tomatoes or even heirlooms, but I had all these tiny tomatoes, so I made them do. Of course, as with many tomato preserves, the yield will vary pretty widely on this one because of variations in water, sugar, and fiber content.

Acidity is always an issue with tomatoes, but is even more so with these small, sweet varieties. I made the call to double the recommended amount of citric acid to this batch, adding 1/4 teaspoon directly to every half pint jar, to ensure a safe finished product. The single 12 ounce jar I used got an proportionally increased amount of citric acid.

If you’re not a home pizza maker, a sauce like this is still a good thing to make for the pantry. It could be used as a starter for enchilada sauce. It’s always a nice addition to a pot of soup when you need added depth and acidity. You could even thin out a couple half pints with a glug of milk and a pat of butter and call it tomato soup. Practical canning at its best!